Processor Lifecycle

The contributors to tweakers.net have come up with a really interesting article, Chip Magicians at Work: Patching at 45nm. The article just skims over some of the iterative development process, but exposes some really cool technology that's utilized to get a processor into production. Debugging can be "done by evaporating certain chemicals into the laser beam, which are then shot directly into the chip. Using corrosives, connections can be broken, while metal and silicon are used to make new structures." Read the article for the full effect, but clearly someone at Intel has their thinking cap on. Note: I originally found this on Slashdot.

Intent

It's been a while since I've posted. There are a few good reasons for that, but the one I'd like to highlight is that "Life On The Bike" no longer reflects what my life is about. Over the next few weeks look for changes to my blog; changes that reflect where I am in life now. I also hope to do some back fill entries so that there isn't a gaping hole between late September and late October. There's a lot of exciting stuff so share, so please bear with me.

Rockwell Neighborhood Grill

Erin and I went to the Rockwell Neighborhood Grill this evening for dinner. It was my first time out of the house today. I was up and down, sleeping most of the day. The Grill hit the spot for my burger craving, but offered a diverse menu that warrants a second go. It was nice to have a relaxed meal. It my first relaxed night in a while. The Dreft site went live sometime this afternoon. I'm glad it's up. I don't suspect I'll have to work on it again.

Dreft.com

This past week I've been doing apps dev for the Dreft.com site redesign. I got pulled onto the project near the end of the day on Monday. I stayed till 9:30, but a couple of other people stayed well into the AM hours. Tuesday wasn't so bad, but Wed. & Thurs. were back to the late nights. Unlike college, I felt like I was only able to work so late. When you start at 9am or earlier, you can't really work much past 9pm.

Friday was the worst of all. The idea was to get the site into staging, final qa in the early afternoon, and deploy in the evening. Yet more unforeseen issues came up and pushed is back so far that we ultimately weren't able to get the site up, but still stayed till 1:30am. The perks of working all the time are free food and expensed cab rides home...totally doesn't make it worth it. I hope the next big vegas project doesn't come down to the same situation.

Posted after the fact

Ink's on the Paper

I signed my permanent contract today! Good news. I asked for a large raise, and got half of what I asked for. The employment is retroactive to 10/1, so I'll be getting the back pay in my check at the end of the month. I'm also all signed up for my medical benefits, pretax transit money, and 401k. I'm all official now. Feels good.

Fiesta!

The Fiesta Open House last night was a huge success. It's more difficult than I would have thought to get good people in advertising, so to get the word out, we had the Fiesta. I didn't do any recruiting, just drinking. We drank lots of strawberry margarita, and stay with co-workers till near midnight. Fun fun fun.

iPhone - My Impressions

Work has an iPhone that people can take home for an extended period of time. I recently got the iPhone over the weekend. Here's the blog post I wrote for work about it:

My first impression of the iPhone: “This is really cool”. If you’re somewhat of a nerd, geek, etc. you’ll probably giggle at some of the ways the iPhone displays. But I’ve had it for 4 days now, and the equivalent of new car smell is gone.

The iPhone’s many virtues have been extolled in countless blogs and websites, so I’ll focus on what I believe will keep it from mass adoption. The first and most obvious drawback is the smudged screen, and learning curve in where your finger will actually register on the screen. You get over these things with familiarity.

The second big drawback is that Safari for the iPhone doesn’t support flash. Could this be a licensing dispute between Apple and Adobe? Either way, it handicaps significant portions of some of the coolest sites. I hope all CM’s non-flash replacements are up to date.

The third drawback is that Apple wrote their own custom apps for Google Maps and YouTube. This means that for whatever reason, Apple thought they had better functionality for these apps then the creators and overwrote that functionality. When navigating to a site that embeds Google Maps, the map can be viewed, but the user cannot click and drag the map…because Apple didn’t want you to double tap and drag.

These incongruencies with what a user expects from other touchscreen and touchpad devices as well as Apple’s need to override functionality could be a downfall of the iPhone.

On another note, the phone functionality experience wasn’t all that great. All the iPod Touch needs is broadband internet to become THE mobile device.

Permanent

I was just offered a permanent position at Critical Mass. Up until now I've been considered term, which is basically a probationary period meant to determine if you're a good fit for the company. I've heard mumblings that this might happen soon, but I'm really excited that it finally has! I actually asked for a bit more, so I haven't signed the contract yet... We'll see if I get what I asked for, either way I'm happy about it!